|
Make your wishes clear, says a Richmond woman with the condition
Pamela Fayerman
Vancouver Sun Tuesday, April 05, 2005
|
RICHMOND - Diagnosed with dementia when she
was in her early 40s, Richmond resident Lynn Jackson wasted
no time in preparing a living will so that when her health
deteriorates, her family and friends know not to let her
end up like Terri Schiavo, the Floridian who died last week
when her feeding tube was disconnected after 15 years.
"I'm not afraid of dying -- just how I will
get there," said the 49-year old former nurse.
"I don't want to be a burden on my family,
and coming from a health care background, I know what I
don't want. I've made it clear that if I can't indicate
what I want at the end of my life, then don't do it,"
said Jackson.
A featured speaker at the first dementia conference
of its kind in B.C., Jackson told delegates to the Transforming
Dementia Care in B.C. conference Monday that medical professionals
should encourage patients to execute a power of attorney
and a representation agreement (living will) as soon as
possible after the diagnosis "so that we can exercise
our own choices about our future while we are still able
to."
|
 |
In an interview outside the conference at the Morris
Wosk Centre for Dialogue, Jackson said she made sure she verbally
repeated and documented her wishes when she was interviewed by
television reporters at a dementia conference in Australia so
there would be none of the chaos and acrimony that existed around
Schiavo.
Although she is lucid, articulate and a much-sought-after
speaker at dementia conferences all over the world, Jackson lives
with her parents and she said there is no doubt about the state
of her brain.
Diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, which accounts
for fewer then 10 per cent of the dementia cases, Jackson has
been told she could live with the disease for up to 20 years.
She takes a cocktail of pills every day, including
a dementia drug, an anti-depressant, a mood stabilizer, another
to combat apathy and a few more for the Parkinson's-like symptoms
she has also developed.
"My doctor, Les Sheldon, is a saviour because
he works with me as a partner. He's a geriatric psychiatrist and
also has a degree in pharmacology," said Jackson, who pulled
a list of her medications out of her knapsack to show its length.
If she forgets to take some of her pills, her parents
may find her sitting mute in a chair, staring into space. But
more often than not, she is energetically leading the Dementia
Advocacy and Support Network International (www.dasninternational.org),
an Internet-based network operated by people with dementia.
"I never thought that a diagnosis of dementia
would get me so many places around the world," says Jackson,
who was trained as a nurse in Victoria before practising in Toronto
and then moving into private industry where she worked for a medical
supply company.
"My symptoms began when I moved to Puerto Rico
from Mexico. Uncharacteristically, I would have these outbursts
of swearing and anger. Then I started to forget phone numbers,
addresses and who my clients were," she said.
PREVALENCE OF DEMENTIA IN B.C.:
Based upon Statistics Canada population figures
and the Canadian Study of Health and Aging:
- 61,000 B.C. residents have dementia; 41,000 women
and 20,000 men.
- 67 per cent of the 61,000 have Alzheimer's disease.
- As the population ages, nearly 14,000 new cases
of dementia will be diagnosed each year.
Source: www.alzheimerbc.org
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
|
